Tolerance cannot be measured in terms of degrees of intolerance. I am essentially opposed to burning books even when they incite others to violence. But freedom is either an absolute or it is conditioned on not inciting others to violence. Anything else is rationalized bigotry.

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Sunday, February 10, 2013

Israel and the Clash of Civilizations

The State of Israel may have created a focus
for Islamism but Islamic colonial aspirations have been murderously successful
since the foundation of the Muslim faith in the 7th Century CE. The Muslim
Brotherhood no more than imitates the Hashishim (it is where the word ‘hashish’
originates) or Order of Assassins, founded in the late 11th Century CE and
which enjoyed a dubious reputation for bloodthirsty and thuggish brutality in
the pursuit of Islamic purity.Perhaps because
of Christianity’s similarly intolerant history we now display an inexplicable
tolerance for this resurgent primitivist Islamic Crusader ideology.

How else can we explain uncritical acceptance
by the global political Left and their liberal allies of this destructive
imperialist pan-Islamic ideology?Why is
it that Israeli nationalism is anathema to all but the politically incorrect?
Why is Zionism almost universally reviled while the malevolent force of Islamism (Muslim
fundamentalism) erupts in a thousand localities around
the world to threaten peace in every corner of the planet but without a single
UN resolution or word of anger from the political order?

In his seminal book “The Clash of
Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order” Samuel Huntington referred to “cleft”
and “torn” countries. In a cleft country
major groups from 2 or more civilizations can cohabit the same space but want
separation and to self-identify to the exclusion of the other. In a torn
country there is one predominant civilisation but its leaders want to shift towards
another civilisation. Examples of torn
countries include Turkey (since
Kemal Attaturk) and Russia (since
Peter the Great), both are Eurasian and Orthodox rather than Western-Modern;
interestingly, Australia since
the 1990’s is looking to Asia as a bridge between the West and the East; and Mexico (in fact much of South America) since the
1980’s (Latin America verses the USA). Divided loyalties define the torn country.

Local nationalism barely existed at the time
of WW1.In Israel, populations were split
between Arab Bedouin and a section of the urban and effendi classes; the
fellaheen (rural mass of the population), Jews, Christians and other smaller
immigrant groups.Only the Bedouin
usually considered themselves to be Arabs. Arab names could almost always be identified
as rooted in biblical, Israelite Hebrew names.Many village customs were localized and Judaic. Displacement of the indigenous Jewish population
was never sufficient to suppress or destroy the local traditions of Israel.

There are villages in Israel which
within the last couple of hundred years were still predominantly Christian or
Jewish.Many ‘Arabs’ were either Jewish
or Christian and only in the last few centuries has nationalist Muslim
exclusivity succeeded in driving them out or forcing them to assimilate into
the Islamic mass.

If we fail to address the hypocrisy that
singles out Israel
for criticism at every turn while ignoring the intolerance and the terror that
is central to the expansionist global Islamic nation we are creating a
dystopian future for ourselves and our children.

Richard Holbrooke argued that an ‘arc of
crisis’ stretches from Turkey
through Iraq, Iran through Pakistan
(which includes Afghanistan).A regional approach views Israel and Palestine
as part of a wider Syria – Lebanon - Iran axis.

How far do we have to fall before we
recognise that it is also our problem? Islamism is the old-new geopolitical
game of dominoes. We lost sight during a different game of dominoes, the
Communist era, but it is essential that our newly re-acquired focus is not
lost. We are fighting this war the
wrong way.Tens of billions of dollars
have gone to Islamist nations that support terror, Pakistan
and Egypt
being but two of the most obvious examples of this failed policy.

Anti-Israel activists ceaselessly complain
that Israel has received far
too much money from the USA for
its national defence, and yet in comparison, it is clear that the US strategy of propping up the corrupt Karzai administration
in Kabul has done nothing to help win the war
against the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Since 2002 Washington has appropriated almost
$120 billion of non-military funds (most of it spent) for
Afghanistan
reconstruction.The US will have
wasted all those precious lives (and the money) in a futile effort if it does
not begin to address the issues that nourish the Taliban and their like.Afghanistan will fall back into the savage swamp
its Islamists desire if the US
fails to forcefully confront ongoing Pakistani complicity in this colonial war.

India is a target. It
could likewise be swallowed up by this threatened Islamic front.Islamists refer to all of India as being
stolen Muslim land. Contempt for Indian sovereignty by Muslim Pakistan is amply
demonstrated by the November 26, 2008 and subsequent Mumbai atrocities.It was alleged to have been orchestrated and
carried out by Lashkar-e-Taiba (see below) while
under the control of Pakistan’s
Intelligence Service.To quote Yossi
Melman, (a journalist for Israeli newspaper Haaretz, writing on 30th November
2008):

“Lashkar-e-Taiba, which was outlawed in Pakistan in 2003, was created by Pakistan's
spy service, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, which
over the years continued to support it and other Islamic groups. The ISI and
the Pakistani Army used the Islamic groups as a whip to weaken India as part of its strategy to return (my italics) Kashmir
to Pakistani sovereignty. The fact that the ISI essentially created the Taliban
in Afghanistan indicates
that the use of radical Islamist groups and violence as a means to an end is
not foreign to Islamabad.”

The ISI was later revealed to be “deeply
involved in planning the 2008 terror attack on Mumbai, going so far as to fund
reconnaissance missions to the Indian city…. The spy agency provided handlers
for all the top members of the group” (Haaretz 19th October 2010).Why? The attack “killed 166 people, paralyzed
India's business capital and froze peace efforts between Pakistan and India”.For the ISI the financial and human cost was
simply the icing on the cake.

And while we may assume that this is someone
else’s problem, it is in fact a reminder that Islamism is everyone’s problem,
everywhere. Islamists view the conquest of Europe
as ‘unfinished business.’

Turkey’s foreign minister,
Ahmet Davutoglu publicly reminded his Austrian compatriots that they must not integrate into their host
Austrian society; that their loyalty and identity remains Muslim and Turkish.Professor Ahmet Davutoglu is no political
hack. He is a former political scientist and academic; a Muslim fundamentalist
who truly believes in the concept of Turkish neo-Ottomanism, the latest
incarnation of Islamic colonialism.

Major Islamic terrorist incidents in New York, London, Madrid and Bali are not
indicative of an aberrant attitude to Western society; they are symptomatic of
the disease that eased the germination of an idea, which in turn grew, one that
mainstreamed the suggestion that ‘we got what we deserved’

Twenty million Muslims live in Europe and their population is expected to double or
treble over the next few decades. This is an issue that we, the infidel
majority, fail to deal with, first at the cost of our identity and then at the
cost of our future.